aristocracy of technology

Absolutely no chances to update this log of certain being here. Barely a moment to consider even the possibility in mind, much less the quiet and concentration to put hands to keyboard to make this happen. I spend long hours with other people. Teaching, speaking, discussing, listening, planning, and the rest is for slaving away on practical Web things and whatever. I have finished with all the teaching I will do in Finland on this trip. Terhi and I ended two days of intensive lecturing and hands-on work with students at the Academy of Fine Arts yesterday. The course turned out very well, the students were quite enthusiastic and motivated despite the short time imposed on the teaching. It is a good opening into a place that is in great need of getting a more broad introduction to concepts relating to networking and to technology. Oliver, the Vice-Rector of the Academy, and the Head of the Time and Space Department, has done a good job bringing technology-based mediums into the teaching space, but there is the usual resistance. I find technophobia to be an interesting phenomenon. On one side, a distrust of machines is necessary, even demanded by the excesses of the situation we find ourselves (our Western Selves) in these days. But unless there is some kind of (anarchic?) engagement of technology by some people at least, we leave the driving to the Aristocracy of Technologists. They will rule in their new Hierarchical Form (Consumer/Slave vs Producer/Master) without opposition. Ahhrgh. I am not an ideologist, and dislike framing the issues in pseudo-academic lingo. For myself, I believe that the most revolutionary action I can engage in is an unmediated and genuine dialogue with another human being. Maybe too simplistic. I wash some clothes in the sink. It cleans my fingernails and exercises my hands at the same time. I listen to the radio, voices talking about the Market. There is no other World, it seems. To the voices of the New Media, the world is a phenomenon of the market. And the people are Workers and Consumers. I do not understand what the impact of this propaganda, this imposition of a monolithic worldview, is upon daily life. Does it dominate life? Is it true that we are merely pawns in the consume game played out by these cloaked NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)?